Is God Necessary For Religion? Easter Sunday

Transcription

1 1 Is God Necessary For Religion? Easter Sunday Rev. Dr. Jim Culver Sermon at UUSP on April 4, 2010 To the reader: This sermon was only part of a service of worship with many components working together, all of which were designed to be experienced in a community context. In our "free pulpit" tradition, its concepts are intended not as truths to receive, but as spurs to your own thought and faith. CALL TO WORSHIP (In loving memory of my former colleague & mentor, Rev. Dr. Duncan Littlefair) This is a day for us to live. Let s celebrate it and make a difference in the world. Let s be grateful for the incredible gift of life, And let us be especially grateful for the love which brings us together Giving dignity, meaning, worth and joy to all of our days. READINGS Our readings this morning speak to the mythology that has become entangled with the teachings of Jesus, specifically concerning the mythology surrounding the Christian holiday of Easter. Of our four readings this morning, the first three are printed in our programs. Christ s archetypal similarity with the ancient vegetation gods is shown by his statements I am the true vine (John 15:1) and I am the bread of life (John 3:35) which is reminiscent of the god Dionysius. The central theme of the Christian myth, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, closely corresponds to the ancient myths which celebrated the death and rebirth of the Green Man. The return of the sacrificed god to Earth in the Spring and the corresponding rebirth of the natural world is transposed in

2 2 Christianity to the resurrection of Christ at Easter which brings the greening of new life to the soul as well as nature. Christ as the Archetypal Green Man, Richard Zelley That your passion may live through its own daily resurrection and like a phoenix rise above its own ashes. Kahlil Gibran Is the resurrection real? If we believe in a creative power that shatters the icy tomb of winter with the life-giving miracle of spring, we have seen a resurrection. If we believe in a creative power which moves tens and then tens of thousands of people to cry against the injustices of society, enabling the downfall of hatred and prejudice, then we have created a resurrection. If we believe in a creative power within each human breast which enables us to break the bonds of personal pain and know the hope of new tomorrows, then we have experienced a resurrection. - Mark Harris Our fourth reading, actually a spin off from another UU Minister, Robert Fulghum, speaks to a philosophy of All I need to know I learned from the Easter Bunny! Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Everyone needs a friend who is all ears. There's no such thing as too much candy. All work and no play can make you a basket case. A cute tail attracts a lot of attention. Let happy thoughts multiply like rabbits. Keep your paws off of other people's jelly beans. The grass is always greener in someone else's basket To show your true colors, you have to come out of the shell. Some body parts should be floppy.

3 3 SERMON Is God necessary for religion? This morning, let s briefly explore this question together, which will require an examination of what is meant by that three letter word God, the physical resurrection of Jesus, and the need of our species to add myth and legend to our answers to the questions of life. For Our Guests For our guests here today, please allow me a moment to provide them with a framework in which to listen to this sermon on a subject which to many might sound heretical. The teachings of Jesus were all about love, and love is the spirit of this church. The writers of the biblical books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had a mission that had little to do with recording history and everything to do with preserving Jesus s teachings during the early decades of the first century that considered the death of Jesus to be also the end of his influence on the Jewish community. For Unitarian Universalists, especially those UUs who retain and enhance their Christianity, it s preferable to examine the Bible and all religious texts for passages that ring true to our own deepest personal experiences than to adhere to the theistic eternal truth fundamentalism that permeates the majority of religious institutions in our country today. Our religious community here in St. Petersburg exists not to defend the inaccurate minutia of any of the world s religious texts, but to inspire each of us on our own unique spiritual journeys and to love and serve others, thereby making a difference in the world. In that light, on this Easter Sunday, I suggest to our guests that Jesus was born in a perfectly normal manner in Nazareth of a perfectly normal non-virgin Mother. His earthly father, Joseph, was probably a literary creation. Jesus may have had 12 disciples,

4 4 but these included both male and female followers. Jesus did not perform miracles, making nature bend to his will, bringing sight to the blind or wholeness to the paralyzed or making the dead walk again. There was no last Supper where bread was identified with his body and wine with his blood. There were no mocking crowds, no crown of thorns, no thieves, no cry of thirst, no darkness at noon. There was no tomb, no Joseph of Arimathea, no earthquake, no angel who rolled a rock away. And there was no resuscitated body that walked from a tomb on the third day. All of these stories were the creation of a community of people who had an experience of wonder from listening to the marvelous teachings of Jesus. It was not the intent of the biblical authors to record history, but to give emphasis to those beautiful teachings of love that Jesus gave to humanity by weaving an interpretive tapestry that aligned those teachings with preexistent prophesies. To those first century writers, what better vehicle to assure that these teachings would survive than to attach them to a spiritual leader who the authors could prove to be a Son of God? Unfortunately, the evolution of Christianity became fixated on Jesus the Christ of myth and fulfilled prophesy rather than Jesus the teacher of love and compassion. With that, Christianity lost its capacity to be flexible in responding to human need and instead became rigid in its insistence on human compliance in accepting the mythology that Jesus was the world s Savior. So, with that framework, let s do the work of today and ask not if the resurrection of Jesus was real or not, but deeper, ask why is a resurrection story so prevalent in all of our human mythology and deeper still, ask is God necessary for religion?

5 5 Human Mythology And A Resurrection Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, as if to remind us not to separate Easter from nature s patterns. The Spring Equinox is unique in that day and night are of equal length. Light and dark are held in perfect balance. That balance can remind us that there is a latent wisdom that lies within every one of us. It s a wisdom that is made up of a series of ancient images, images that come from religious myth and cultural images. You don t always realize the wisdom is there. But at times of crisis in your lives you often access that wisdom. It s where dreams and visions and your intuition emerge from. Even the religion you learned as a child, you still have, whether that religion manifests as baggage for you or as opportunity. The point of mythological wisdom is to put extraordinary language on our human struggles and challenges. Myth connects with something deep within us, something very ancient. Myth inspires us to rise above our challenges and see them from a higher perspective. When we see a problem from a higher perspective, it seems more manageable. We can break it down into pieces from a distance, and solve just one part of the problem at a time. We must do our work as a religious community by solving one part of our problems at a time, piece by piece, on a person to person basis. Faced with the problems that we have in our world today that sometimes overwhelm us beyond words: global warming, poverty, prejudice, racism, violence, wars, and any number of personal crises, it is simply good to know that we re are doing something, and that something is enough. Faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges, myths inspire us to rise above and do that first piece, that something. Hellen Keller once said, Only in the dark, can you see

6 6 the stars. Only when you face the challenge head on can you draw from deep within you the vision to see beyond the challenge. Manage a piece of the challenge; make a piece of the problem go away. Make the problem more manageable; make it so that it is not insurmountable anymore. The power of myth can be misused, however. Rather than accessing that which is deep within to inspire, mythology can be misappropriated in an attempt to validate a given perspective. Such was the case in aligning the beautiful teachings of Jesus with the mythology from both Pagan and Hebrew sources in order to preserve his teachings after his death. From a teacher of love and human compassion, the lessons of Jesus became obscured in theistic layers of prophesy and myth heaped upon the person of Jesus. Here s a snapshot of the myth let s see if you can name the person described. He became born of a virgin on December 25 th with shepherds in attendance. He promised immortality. He performed miracles and was considered the Way, the Truth and the Light, the Redeemer, the Savior, the Messiah. He was buried in a tomb and after three days rose again, a resurrection that was celebrated every year thereafter. And with this added baggage of mythology and fulfilled prophesy wedded to his teachings, his followers hoped that his lessons would spread and that everyone throughout the known world would know the name of say it with me (Jesus) or Mithra, or any one of seven other religious founders in that millennium. The virgin birth to resurrected Savior myth was very popular around the Mediterranean for over a thousand years prior to Jesus. As author Richard Zelley wrote in our earlier reading, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, even closely corresponds to the more ancient myths which celebrated the death and rebirth of the Green Man, as well as to Greek and Roman Gods. The return of the

7 7 sacrificed god to Earth in the Spring and the corresponding rebirth of the natural world was transposed in Christianity to the resurrection of Jesus at Easter which brings the greening of new life to the soul as well as nature. It appears that our species both recognizes and needs this correlation between humanity and nature, and so Easter has become a celebration of humanity s potential and nature s patterns, the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. Is God Necessary For Religion? Whenever I m out in the larger community and someone outside of Unitarian Universalism asks what I do for a living, they always ask two subsequent questions. The first question is have you been saved, closely followed by do you believe in God? I love that latter question. As religious liberals who have spent our lives fighting for the right to think critically and escape the confines of theistic, fundamentalist thought, we often have left behind certain aspects of our past that may be of use to us today as our spiritual journeys have evolved. Perhaps many of us were in such a hurry t run away from or distance ourselves from the pain of our previous religious experience that we fled without packing to take with us some elements or language that would still be relevant and useful. So, in order to answer that question do you believe in God? we religious liberals need to consider retrieving the use of that word God. God. It s only three letters, three letters that might refer to something without, within, between or beyond, to ideas, to feelings, to a spirit, or to nothing at all. Yet the use of that word God, I ll say it again, God, provides a framework with which we can initiate a conversation with others both within our community and beyond these walls that could lead to a deeper understanding for everyone. Incorporating that word God allows us to interact with our

8 8 fellow UUSP members, as well as to our friends, neighbors and coworkers by asking equivalency questions: what are your values? What do you need to do to bring dignity and meaning and worth to yourself and to others? How do you live in order to bring joy to all your days? Can you have a religion without God or without whatever that three letter word means to you? Yes, of course, but the experience of your religious journey would not be as rich for you. Why deny yourself access to the wealth of wisdom from all of humanities vast religious expressions throughout history? Why cut yourself off from those who, like us only in previous centuries, fought to incorporate critical thinking into a spiritual experience yet only had a God language with which to express themselves? Incorporating the word God into your vocabulary allows the two of us to dialogue and mutually share about what good looks like to you, for surely something that you view as good could be good beyond you and then of interest to others. What are those values that work to create good inside of us and in our world to inspire us, to give meaning to our defeats, and to give us hope for tomorrow? That is a richness that the use of the word God can give to your religious quest, to discover valuable insights both from our contemporaries and from the vastness of human history. We then can join the real Jesus and Moses and Muhammad and the Buddha, for they, like us were all seeking the same thing and they were all finding the same thing and they were all teaching the same thing. The wonder and beauty of the mystery of life. You can call that love, or a force of nature, or a process, or the spirit, or enlightenment, or salvation, or you can simply use the word God and have a connection with all the people who use or whoever have used that term in their lives. God is not a word to run away from screaming. It s a wonderful, unifying,

9 9 relational word. I can hold a semi-intelligent conversation with anyone who claims that they believe in God, after I discover what that word means to them. Let s use as an ice breaker during coffee in Gilmour Hall to your right a question that both long time members and first time guests can equally dialogue on. Do you use the word God? This special community is a wonderful and safe place to begin asking that question. Here we come to be inspired and to find comfort, to journey with others that are also on their own unique journeys, to know that there are others here who both need us and who are a source of courage and strength for us. This is what makes our community here in St. Petersburg one of the most vibrant liberal religious beacons on the planet. This is a place of freedom where we take our individual journeys together, where we do not rest in dogma, doctrine or creed, where we do not provide answers to questions, but encourage personal adventures into the mystery of life. The foundation of the universe is mystery. There are just deeper layers of questions and deeper layers of experience. The Physicist Stephen Hawking once said that even if one day scientists could devise a Grand Unified Theory, a single mathematical formula that would encompass all the laws of nature, they would still have no idea why the universe exists. The mystery would remain. * So, is God necessary for religion? And, why is a resurrection story so prevalent in our human mythology? To address the latter, let s hear again the reading from Mark Harris: Is the resurrection real? If we believe in a creative power that shatters the icy tomb of winter with the life-giving miracle of spring, we have seen a resurrection. If we believe in a creative power which moves tens and then tens of thousands of people to cry against the injustices of society, enabling the downfall of hatred and prejudice, then we

10 10 have created a resurrection. If we believe in a creative power within each human breast which enables us to break the bonds of personal pain and know the hope of new tomorrows, then we have experienced a resurrection. To address the former question of whether you can have a religion without God yes, of course you can, but the experience of your religious journey would not be as rich. The use of that word however carries with it the responsibility for you to journey on your own adventure into an understanding of what that word means to you. Are your own deepest personal experiences leading you toward a God Within, Between or Beyond? The God Within calls us to own and experience the responsibility of the spirit and love within us that makes us creators of our own reality. That is the God Within. The God Between is the understanding capacity to see in the face of another a reflection of life, a reflection of ourselves, a reflection of love. This is what drives us into community at a very deep level. The God Beyond is the place where we simply stand in awe and wonder as we celebrate the mystery of life. Here at UU St. Pete, we have the privilege of celebrating that mystery together. We do this in the same spirit and for the same reasons we do all that we do in life to bring Dignity, Meaning, Worth and Joy to all our days. Waves of love.